Invisible violence exists in some rural areas in northern Nigeria. ‘Invisible’ here entails lack of available documented instances of fatal violence in such areas. Against this backdrop, the lack of data has prompted this study to unearth, document, and evaluate any occurrences of lethal violence in Karasuwa, Machina, Nguru, and Yusufari local government areas (LGAs) of Yobe State from 2006 to 2014.

The specific objectives are to:

Assess invisible violence in Karasuwa, Machina, Nguru, and Yusufari LGAs in Yobe State

Identify the causes of lethal violence

Document the series of fatal incidents through terrorism, ethno-religious conflicts, land disputes, and political clashes.

The field research gathered evidence of the drivers of violence through desktop research and review of secondary materials such as media reports, Internet sources, databases, policy reports, and academic literature, combined with the administration of questionnaires and the conduct of unstructured interviews.

According to the findings, the lack of data on fatal incidents in Karasuwa, Machina, Nguru, and Yusufari LGAs is not due to the lack of violence but to a host of issues such as the lack of infrastructure for the media. The study also discovered that, since 2012, the Boko Haram insurgency has become a significant cause of violent death. The majority of respondents (71%) saw their neighbourhoods as violent, and more than 96% were aware of the occurrence of fatal incidents in their communities in the previous 10 years.